High Hopes: A Phillies Podcast - Mound Visit Ep. 3: The Phillies All-Time Dream Team with Tom Stone

Episode Date: January 15, 2019

In episode 3 of Mound Visit, Tim Kelly is joined by Tom Stone, author of Now Taking the Field, Baseball's All-Time Dream Teams for all 30 Franchises to talk about what the Phillies All-Time dream team and what it would look like. Twitter: https://twitter.com/TomStoneBB http://nowtakingthefield.com/ https://www.amazon.com/Now-Taking-Field-Baseballs-Franchises/dp/0879466669   See omnystudio.com/policies/listener for privacy information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Go back to school with Rogers and get Canada's fastest and most reliable internet. Perfect for streaming lectures all day or binging TV shows all night. Save up to $20 per month on Rogers Internet. Visit rogers.com for details. We got you. Rogers. Every Canadian dairy farm is unique. That's why every farmer takes charge of their own unique environmental farm plan.

Also drawing from 57 environmental practices. My plan starts with soil health. This is the High Hopes Podcast. the Blue Cow logo. Dairy Farmers of Canada. This is the High Hopes Podcast. High Hopes. It's a bunch of baseball nerds. Well, without the computers. Talking about the Philadelphia Phillies on Radio.com and Sports Radio 94 WIP. What's going on, High Hopes listeners? I am Tim Kelly.

This is edition number one of Mound Visit in 2019, episode number three overall. And as always, I am appreciative of you guys for tuning in. I'm not a big New Year's resolution guy, but one of the changes I want to make in 2019 is to read things that don't necessarily translate. To read things essentially just to read them and to become more knowledgeable. I think I love writing. I love that people read my work on both 94wip.com and on philliesnation.com. That's all well and good, and that's the dream, man. But one of the things I think I get too caught up in sometimes is reading,

what is the latest rumor about where Bryce Harper or Manny Machado is going to sign? What did Reese Hoskins have to say about the questionable play that Oduble Herrera made in the outfield today? And it kind of clouds the fact that I love reading about the history of sports, baseball specifically, but the history of all sports. So those two things kind of intersected when I found this book. It's called Now Taking the Field, Baseball's All-Time Dream Teams for All 30 Franchises. It's by Tom Stone. We're going to be talking to Tom a little bit later in this episode,

and I'm excited to do that because Tom is extremely insightful. And he put together—he's certainly not the first person to try and put together all-time dream teams, who's the best player at every position. And really, he goes goes way deeper than that and we'll get into that with him but who's the best player at each position on every team um it's just it's one of those concepts that i can put out this podcast today and in a year it'll still be interesting to people so a lot of what i like to do on this podcast is to do kind of these evergreen type debates that people will be talking about in a year or two and it'll still largely be relevant information and i think that that's one of those debates because

just for example he put together this all-time dream team and he has people that i was debating in my childhood about about scland, about Cole Hamels, about Roy Halladay. Roy Halladay, I don't think, cracked the final team, but he's kind of given an honorable mention. He has Bobby Abreu. He has Ryan Howard. So a lot of these people that we were debating 10 years ago, we're still debating now. And that's one of the great things about sports. You get caught up in the day-to-day stuff about what are the Phillies going to look like in 2019 but it is cool even if the Phillies don't have a history of being the most successful franchise they've been around so long that

they certainly have their fair share of elite talents and hall of fame talents that have come through and don red pinstripes so it leads to an interesting discussion about what goes into making an all-time team. Does peak matter more? Does longevity? Do you find some way to make a hybrid of the two? And there's lots of different advanced metrics that try to do that. So I talked to Tom Stone earlier this week. And Tom, again, I can't say enough about how good this book is because there's a chapter on the Phillies,

but there's also a chapter on the 29 other teams, and I legitimately have read every single chapter of this book because it's easy to digest, and it's one of those things, like in a lot of senses in the Internet age, countdowns are scoffed at, and I never really got that because everyone naturally likes countdowns. I know that there's different websites that have kind of rigged the system using SEO and made countdowns with poor quality but this is the case of when a countdown or when an all-time team can be put

together so well because it's in-depth content but it's easy to digest it's broken up into different teams so I would highly recommend you reading this book and without further ado let's easy to digest. It's broken up into different teams. So I would highly recommend you reading this book. And without further ado, let's get to Tom because we had a very interesting discussion on his all-time team for the Philadelphia Phillies. We are thrilled to welcome Tom Stone, author of Now Taking the Field, baseball's all-time dream teams for all 30 franchises, to mound visit here on Sports Radio 94 WIP. Taking the Field, Baseball's All-Time Dream Teams for All 30 Franchises to Mound. Visit here on Sports Radio 94 WIP.

The book can be found on Amazon at Barnes & Noble or wherever you get your books, and I would highly recommend you doing so. For any other details, please visit nowtakingthefield.com. Tom, we'll get right into the nitty-gritty in a second, but I wanted to ask you how you came about the idea of writing this book because you have an interesting background, and while I've seen others attempt to do things like this, you seem to have put it together in the most comprehensive way possible.

Yeah, thanks, Tim. So I'm 45 years old. I grew up in the 70s and 80s in western New York. And around here, this time of year in the winter, you can't play baseball. Obviously, it's way too cold with snow on the ground. But I would spend a lot of my time as a kid, you know, thinking about the Baseball Hall of Fame, who are the greatest players of all time, who would be the best in each position, and also who would be the best at each position on each team,

an all-time dream team for each of the different teams. I was a Pirates fan, so of course I spent some time with the Pirates, but I would think about all the different teams and try and come up with lineups. Like you said, other authors have done that over the years, other fan surveys and things throughout the decades, and I actually reference a lot of those in the book and compare my selections with theirs. But I did want to take a more comprehensive approach.

It's now the year 2019, and even for the past couple of decades, we have a lot of sabermetrics and things like Bill James' wind shares and then the statistics of war, winds above replacement, that's become very popular. So I wanted to take an approach that incorporates some of those most modern stats. One other question is kind of setting the table for our listeners. What metrics went into determining these all-time teams, and did you leave yourself the power to break ties and make adjustments as you deem necessary?

Yeah, absolutely. So as I was just saying, I wanted to start with some of the Sabre metrics that really make it easier to compare players across eras. So I did start with war, wins above replacement, and I used that as sort of a baseline, but I didn't end there. Certainly readers can look at the stat tables in the book and just see who has the highest war at each position for each team and build out a team that way. But if you do that, then you're looking more at length of time with a team, and peak performance wouldn't rise to the top as much. So I looked at overall war.

I looked at their top three war seasons. I looked at war per game played to get a sense for their average value over time. And then I looked at some other factors as well, like traditional stats, home runs, batting average, strikeouts, things like that that everyone knows so well over the years. I looked at postseason performance. How do they do in the playoffs and World Series? Because war doesn't cover the postseason at all. And then I looked at honors and awards.

How often were they in all-star MVP ballot considerations? How many gold gloves did they win? Things like that. So there's positions on this list that are no-brainers. Of course, Mike Schmidt's going to be the third baseman. Chase Utley's going to be the second baseman. However, when you ask most Phillies fans who the greatest first baseman in franchise history is, the answer you're probably going to get from most is

Ryan Howard. You did have Howard as the backup at first base, and you actually pushed him over Fred Lutéris and John Kruk, who based on a lot of these metrics, especially given what transpired in the second half of Ryan Howard's career, they graded out better than Ryan Howard. But you went with Dick Allen

as a first baseman. Why is that? Yeah, so Dick Allen obviously played for a few teams in his career, but he had some really strong seasons in the 60s for the Phillies. And he split his time between first base and third base. He actually played more third than first for the Phillies and then switched more to first base and DH for some other clubs later. But with Schmidt over at third, obviously Allen's not going to trump him.

And also with Scott Rowland needing to get him on the roster, I thought, as the backup third baseman, there wouldn't be room for Allen at third necessarily. So I shifted Allen over to first, and I did that. I made that move in a lot of spots for a lot of teams. If a player played, as long as they played a fair number of games at a position, I considered them eligible for that spot. And in this case, yeah, Ryan Howard is one of those rare guys who hit a lot of home runs, had a lot of RBIs, had a lot of RBIs,

had a lot of accolades and honors, but Ward doesn't treat him very well the way that statistic is calculated. So I got him on the roster, but only as a backup to Allen. At catcher, you could make a case for five or six different people. Bob Boone, Mike Lieberthal,

Carlos Ruiz. You ultimately gave the nod to Darren Dalton as a starter, and Andy Semenik, who had a sit-in with the Phillies in the 1940s and another one in the 1950s. I guess this is two questions, but how did you choose Dalton, and then how different is it to sell readers on someone who realistically maybe a few of the people reading the book have seen play, but a majority probably didn't? Yeah, and that's true for a few of the people reading the book have seen play, but a majority probably didn't.

Yeah, and that's true for a lot of players. I mean, certainly teams like the Phillies that have a very long history, going back to the 1800s even, you know, for a lot of these National League clubs. It is difficult, you know, for modern readers who only know the players from their era or only contemporary players to appreciate. But that's why in the book I didn't just provide the stat tables. I then provided a paragraph on each of the players I considered, not just those that I selected, but everyone that I considered

gets his own paragraph where I talk about some of their highlights from their career, some of the downsides maybe, all in the context of why I chose some players over others. For catcher for the Phillies, you're absolutely right. There's probably a half dozen. I think I covered eight or nine, but there's probably a half dozen that legitimately you could consider to choose. And I went with Dalton and Semenik,

but you could certainly make a case for some of the others you mentioned, like Boone and Lieberthal and Ruiz. We're talking to Tom Stone, author of the tremendous book Now Taking the Field, Baseball's All-Time Dream Teams for all 30 franchises here on Mound Visit. Perhaps my favorite nod you gave, although I did appreciate the nod to Scott Rowland because I feel like sometimes I'm the only one making that case in Philadelphia,

but perhaps my favorite nod you gave was to Bobby Abreu in right field. Abreu is a very interesting character. He'll become eligible for the Hall of Fame next year and tops recent inductee Vladimir Guerrero in some key metrics. And if he doesn't top him, he's right in the ballpark. I don't think he will get in and he probably shouldn't. But in right field, you selected him over Chuck Klein, who is a Hall of Famer. I think you're probably right, but that is one that you're going to have to sell people on a little bit. Yeah, I think that's true. There's sort of a love affair with the Triple Crown,

and Klein was a Triple Crown player in the 30s. The 30s, of course, was a very high offensive numbers era. Klein also played in a ballpark that I think helped some of his offensive numbers. If you just look at them across the board, he batted 326, 243 home runs. But then if you compare the OPS+, which is his on-base plus slugging, adjusted for era and for ballpark, it's a 139, with 100 being the average player for that player's year. Klein has 139, and Abreu has 139.

Very high result for Abreu there. Abreu also provided a lot more speed, as you know, 254 stolen bases in his nine years for the Phillies. He just comes out much higher. He's tied in OPS+, but he comes out higher in war, almost the same in terms of peak war, but way higher in terms of war per game played. So for me,

it wasn't a real hard decision, but for a lot of fans that just think of Hall of Fame and Triple Crown, they would assume Klein would be the top choice there. I went with Abreu. There were some other good ones, too, like Gabby Kravitz and Johnny Callison. Phillies really are loaded, not just in right field, but across the entire outfield. It's interesting. I guess in a lot of ways, that selection speaks to how we've changed how we vote for the Hall of Fame because realistically if Chuck Klein's on the Hall of Fame ballot today I'm not sure if he gets in

because like you mentioned, Bobby Bray certainly had his flaws he wasn't on really any contending teams throughout the course of his career he was not a good fielder despite winning one gold glove but he was about as good of an offensive player as you'll find. And he's someone that I think a majority of people would look at and say he falls considerably short. So it's an interesting debate to have, certainly. The final position I want to pick your brain about is relief pitcher. I think your starting rotation of Robin Roberts, Steve Carlton, Grover Cleveland, Alexander Kohlhamels, and Kurt Schilling,

it's hard to argue with that. There's certainly other pieces that have come in, like Roy Holiday and Cliff Lee, and had individual two- or three-year stretches. But I think you're correct in giving the nod to people like Cole Hamels and Curt Schilling, who had a little bit more of an extended run. However, in the realm of picking the best reliever, you chose Tug McGraw to headline your bullpen. Relievers come and go. A lot of times, the nature of the business is you don't have a ton of longevity, which is what makes guys like Mariano Rivera so special. But how did you

guard against this type of list overlooking someone like Jonathan Papelbon, who all his faults became the Phillies' all-time saves leader, and I know saves aren't a great metric, but he became the all-time saves leader despite spending just three and a half seasons with the team. Yeah, relief pitching across the board for all the different teams was one of the more difficult positions. For one thing, wins above replacement, I think most people would agree, doesn't do a good job of really determining the relief pitcher's value

compared to some of the other positions. It's also the case that there's not a lot of variance in the war number across different relievers. I mean, just looking at the Phillies, I think I looked at 10 different relief pitchers, and the highest was Turk Farrell at 11.2, and the others are all bunched up around 10, 9, 8, 7. So, I mean, that's just not very much variance.

And that's not for one season, of course. That's for their whole career with the Phillies. So you can't really go by war because the differences just aren't that great. You mentioned that Pamplebon currently has the most saves for the Phillies. And while that's true, it's only 123 saves since he only had those three-and-a-half seasons. So it's not like he has the numbers that Hoffman or Rivera or even someone like a Raleigh Fingers has in terms of hundreds and hundreds of saves.

He did have a very strong 2.31 ERA during his time at the Phillies and a great whip. So he has some great numbers there, but three and a half seasons, compare that with the 10 seasons from Tug McGraw or the seven years for Jim Constanti, including an MVP that I think people have debated that MVP and signed the award, but I think he rightly deserved that. So I went with some players that had a longer tenure with the Phillies. If you just wanted who had the best one or two single seasons or amongst the single seasons you really picture, then yeah, Papelbon would be in that discussion. Yes, certainly.

And obviously you add in Brad Lidge for 2008. Billy Wagner had two excellent seasons here. I don't think too many people are going to want me to die on the hill of defending Jonathan Papabon because he did not leave Philadelphia with the greatest of reputations. I don't think he left anywhere in his career with the greatest of reputations. But he certainly was a hell of a pitcher. Finally, you did have a small section about the prospects for current players to crack the list. Realistically, we're doing quite a bit of projecting here because the Phillies are a young team.

It's hard to imagine, to me, Reese Hoskins cracking this starting lineup, given how many great options the Phillies have at first base. Who knows? I mean, he might not have the fall-off that Ryan Howard had, but he's probably not going to have the peak that Ryan Howard had. He's not a very good fielder. So there's lots of things that go into that. However, if last season was any indication, Aaron Nola would seem to have a very real chance to find his way

into the all-time starting rotation over Schillinger, Cole Hamels, wouldn't you say? Yeah, I think so. One challenge that current players have is they don't tend, on average, there are exceptions, of course, like Derek Jeter and Cal Ripken and people like that, but they don't tend to stay with one team nearly as long as they used to. So that's just a bias against current players in general because I do only look at, for the book,

I only looked at their time for that particular team, not their entire career. The upside of that, of course, is that some players can make more than one all-time roster, and some of them certainly did, like, say, a Frank Robinson who made both the Reds and the Orioles. But, yeah, Aaron Nola obviously is a strong ace now. I think that if you look at my entire roster, you mentioned Hamels and Schilling, but the ones that are after that, I included eight starting pitchers. So I've got Jim Bunning, Chris Short, and Kurt Simmons,

which you can see on the depth chart. So I think, yeah, how many seasons will Nolan need? Obviously more than he's done so far. But if he can continue to pitch as he is and, importantly, stay with the Phillies, then I think he could easily replace Chris Short or Kurt Simmons after a while. It will be an interesting discussion to have. Tom Stone is the author of Now Taking the Field, Baseball's

All-Time Dream Team for all 30 franchises. The book, again, can be found on Amazon at Barnes & Noble or wherever you get your books. Again, I would highly recommend you doing so because even I'm not a huge reader, but I really, I'm not a huge book reader, but I really, really enjoyed this

book and I think it's one of those books that's easy to digest. So for any other details, please visit Now Taking the Field. Tom, thank you for joining us. Thank you, Tim. It was a lot of fun. So one of my favorite parts about this book was kind of looking over some of the people that have passed through Philadelphia that we don't necessarily think of as Phillies. People like Jim Tomey, Pete Rose, Scott Rowland, even who we mentioned in the podcast, guys that had careers and all three of those in my mind are Hall of Fame caliber. That's a different discussion for a different time. But it is fun

to kind of look through the amount of great players that have passed through Philadelphia because we are kind of in one of those modes in Philadelphia. And what I mean by that is there's a lot of people with Phillies connections that seemingly could get into the Hall of Fame this year. That's Roy Halladay. That's Curt Schilling. You go down the list.

Roy Halladay is going to go in as a Toronto Blue Jay. He's mentioned in this book. Curt Schilling could go in as a Philly, could go in as a Diamondback or Red Sox, too. He's mentioned in this book. So, and obviously, you know the case with Pete Rose, and who knows what would happen if Scott Rowland ever got in. I think he deserves to be in. I don't think he ever will be in, but again, different discussion for a different time. That was one of my favorite parts about this book. Again, it really is something that's worth, if you are a big fan of baseball and baseball history and the history of the Philadelphia Phillies

or any baseball team, I would highly recommend that you take a look at this book because I certainly had a good time. The last thing I wanted to say, shout out to Jack and James who had a gigantic week. They had a hell of an interview with Bob Nightingale involving the meeting that took place with Bryce Harper last week so shout out to them they got featured on MLB Network those two have worked extremely hard

to get this podcast where it is now and frankly I'm thankful to that they've given me a chance to be part of this because I do believe that it's something special. And I believe that WIP has given us a platform to build something special. So I'm excited about that. And hey, guys, we are not that far away from a lot of exciting dates. One of the next episodes, I don't know if it'll be the very next episode, but one of the next episodes will be responding to the outcome of the Hall of Fame votes. I don't want to make this podcast specifically about talking about the Hall of Fame, but that really is one of my favorite things on the baseball calendar, and I believe it is

the 22nd that we will know the outcome of the Hall of Fame elections. At this point, it looks like a near lock that Roy Halladay is going to be a first ballot Hall of Famer. Curt Schilling, if I had to guess, will fall short, although he seems to have made some inroads this year which is extremely important as he gets late in his time on the ballot.

Then there's a lot of other interesting Phillies people. We mentioned Roland, Billy Wagner, go down the list. So that'll be fun to respond to. I also have another podcast that I'm extremely excited about. This one's on the shorter end. That one will be on the longer end. One of the next editions coming up of High Hopes

and I teased this on Twitter and got a lot of great responses so I know people are excited about this. It will be breaking down the top 10 home runs in Citizens Bank Park history. Now that is Philly's home runs because immediately and I shared the video two or three

weeks ago of Barry Bonds hitting that missile in the right center field that is, I don't know if a human has ever connected better on a baseball than that exact home run that Barry Bonds hit in 2006 I believe it was. It was either 05 or 06 at Citizens Bank Park.

That's not eligible. You can go down the list. Jason Wirth, Chase Utley, different people that played for the Phillies came back and hit crucial home runs for other teams that were certainly memorable. But I went through this list and the amount of home runs I had to leave off. I had to leave off Mikel Franco's walk-off home run last year, which is certainly memorable because they're wearing the powder blue uniforms and he flicks his helmet off. That's a memorable moment. Jason Wirth had a three-home run game against the Toronto Blue Jays at one point,

I believe in 2007. That just missed making the cut for the list. Chase Utley in 2008. The Phillies, for the first five innings of Game 1 of the NLCS, were in a pitcher's duel with Cole Hamels pitching for the Phillies, for the first five innings of Game 1 of the NLCS, were in a pitcher's duel with Cole Hamels pitching for the Phillies. And then Derek Lowe, who is truly one of the most underappreciated pitchers I've seen in my life, he was pitching extremely well until Chase Utley deposited a ball in the first row

of the right field seats assistance being parked. That one just missed the cut. So not only am I going to do this countdown, I am going to talk to, I believe, Scott Franci is going to be on the program, and I've reached out to a few other people that were involved in calling these games, some that were involved with either playing in the games or at some point were teammates with the players that we're talking about. So that's extremely exciting.

There's a lot of exciting stuff going around, and spring training is not that far around the corner. So I appreciate you guys. It's been a weird offseason because in a lot of ways, there's some sort of quiet point in the offseason where if you write about baseball all year, you get to chill for a little. Because of the Bryce Harper, Manny Machado free agency, which has seemingly lasted for our entire lives at this point,

there really hasn't been that this offseason, which it's a blessing and a curse, but I can't say that I will ever get sick of writing about the possibility of the Phillies employing one or even two Hall of Fame caliber talents. So we will see not far away from spring training, and then there will be a lot of interesting topics and interesting guests to go around as the season goes along. For now, I am Tim Kelly. Follow the High Hopes Podcast on Twitter, at HighHopesPod.

You can get us on iTunes, on Radio.com, which is the place where I listen. It's what's embedded under a lot of articles that you guys see. So great to listen there. And then you can follow me on Twitter at Tim Kelly Sports. And if you have any good ideas for podcast topics, I am always able to be reached at tsk at timkellymedia.com. I will see you guys next time.

All-star closer, Kenley Jansen, we have a question. What's the best podcast of all time? Baseball isn't boring, baby. I'm Rob Bradford, and every single day I'm sitting down with the biggest names to show you this great game is the greatest game. It's my podcast. It's my passion. It's a cause I started more than two years ago and is now the most prolific national daily baseball pod there is.

Another fact, so jump aboard the bib express follow and listen to baseball isn't boring presented by wasabi hot cloud storage on the free odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts